


Pereat Mundus

by rivkat



Series: Ruat Caelum [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Eight crazy nights, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For eclectic: Lex just... gives up. Clark secured Lex's body, but his soul turns out to be much more elusive. As it turns out, all you had to do to defeat Lex Luthor is to take away his dreams. Note: as you would expect, a bit depressing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pereat Mundus

Clark’s wrong about the timeline. It takes, by his own estimation, ten months for the political dynamics to change enough that Lex would have to fight another war to get his power back. Sure, Napoleon and Churchill pulled off great comebacks, and Lex is at least their equal, but things move faster these days, and Lex was already holding a fragile coalition together; he didn’t have a nation that only needed unification behind him.

He doesn’t ask Lex to confirm his analysis. The fact that Lex stops attempting escape is confirmation enough.

He spends a few more months as close to the Fortress as possible, worried that Lex will think of something dramatic and final. Lex has a couple of tantrums, full-on adolescent flinging-objects-at-Clark events made worse by the fact that Lex has absolutely no control over whether Clark leaves him alone or not. Lex’s privacy, such as it is, is by Clark’s grace, and even though neither of them ever say so out loud they are both well aware of this fact. Nor can Clark give Lex any real solitude, because Lex is still a threat.

The tantrums, too, pass.

Lex spends a week not getting out of bed. It’s a test, seeing which one of them will break first. Clark figures that he can be gracious, so on the seventh day he picks Lex up and carries him, rescue-style, into the small but well-stocked kitchen he’s had the Fortress set up. It’s not exactly decorated like the farmhouse was, because in the Fortress that would be ridiculous, like grafting an IHOP onto a Mies van der Rohe building. But he’s chosen homey colors and softer angles, and there’s a table in the middle of the floor that’s just right for sitting down for dinner at.

“You’re going to eat, and you’re going to do it here,” Clark tells him. He’s kind of expecting Lex to dare him—think you can force my mouth open without breaking my jaw? Think you can make me keep it down?—but Lex hesitates, runs his hand over the back of his head, and then quickly eats his soup.

This is a tactic, Clark knows. And Lex’s strategic goals—freedom, converting Clark to his side—those are obvious too. He’s just not able to figure out the connection of the former to the latter, and it makes him nervous.

They don’t have sex, that night. Clark goes out patrolling instead, even though it makes some of the League antsy that Clark doesn’t really need to sleep. He fights a couple of fires, rescues some lost hikers in a California state park, little things. He doesn’t go home to eat or change because he doesn’t need to eat or change. He doesn’t stop by League HQ to be stared at by worried heroes. Sometimes he misses being Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, but there are plenty of other reporters who can chronicle the rebuilding of the world. Still, it would be nice to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t part of the League, whose reaction to his troubles wouldn’t be somewhere between ‘I told you so’ and ‘I don’t see what the problem is.’

The next day, Clark returns and finds that, according to the Fortress, Lex has eaten three balanced meals, spaced appropriately throughout the day. He wants to stalk into Lex’s room and demand to know what Lex is up to, just like old times, but it’s different when Lex can’t even pretend to take measures to keep him out. Instead he knocks and enters like a regular person.

Lex doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he turns and meets Clark’s eyes. Clark shudders but doesn’t know why. The look on Lex’s face is only vaguely familiar.

Clark only recognizes it later that night, after they’ve gone to bed and Lex is asleep next to him.

Lex looked like Tina Greer, or Zod. Like there was someone else at home inside him.

Clark offers Lex puzzles, scientific challenges no one else could solve. Lex treats them like an old, jaded housecat treats catnip: occasionally he plays with them, half-heartedly, because he knows it’s in the job description. Sometimes he produces answers and sometimes he doesn’t, and eventually Clark gives him another one either way.

Sometimes Lex’s answers are right and sometimes they aren’t. Clark wants to believe that this was by design, but usually the Fortress can tell him outright, which isn’t subtle enough for Lex. For Clark’s Lex.

“Are you punishing me?” he asks Lex, once.

Lex tilts his head, questioning. He doesn’t speak.

“Lex,” Clark says warningly, some of the old anger in his voice. He’s tried to be gentle, because he’s responsible for Lex and Lex is entirely dependent on him. The old threats and barely suppressed violence would be … inappropriate, is the least dangerous word. (Abusive isn’t the most.)

“I’m not punishing you, Clark,” he says. Clark flinches. Lex used to say his name differently, like Clark was something precious, extraordinary, and not just another dull fact of his existence.

They fuck a lot. It’s Clark’s penance. Lex says the right filthy words and moves in all the familiar ways, and it’s like fucking the world’s most expensive, most exclusive blow-up doll.

They’re both going to live a long time.


End file.
